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11 thoughts on “signage/wheelchair (ongoing series)”

Right. This is a great idea. I suggest a tagging run of these. We create the signage and “replace” old signs.

I think there should be a unique sign for wheelchair parking though. One that signifies the unique situation of having a “disabled” driver. I’ll start doing parking lots once you get a good design Sara!

What would be best is an “overlay” design, that makes use of the passive wheelchair image but makes it active. Something like (but not like) a steering wheel placed in front of the arms of the figure.

Sara, this symbol is in use all over the Portland, Oregon TriMet light rail system. It’s energetic and great. I’m an architect in California, and am going to use it or the recently-adopted NY version it in my projects. Here’s a link to the NY article:

Hi Erich, that NY symbol in the Post is also our symbol (see quotes from me in that piece!). The one here is one I documented a long time ago, way before our project began. We’re not the first to re-design it, just the first to make it a social design effort. You can get the stencil through our current site, accessibleicon.org, but the image itself is also in the public domain, so you can use it however you like. Thanks for the kind words, and keep us posted!

Abler was run by Sara Hendren between 2009 and 2017. I tracked and commented on art, adaptive technologies and prosthetics, the future of human bodies in the built environment, and related ideas.

It was a time when discussions on the web weren't yet entirely dominated by social media, and it was an exciting moment to be blogging—putting together unlikely bedfellows next to one another, magazine-style, to see what sense could be made by thinking aloud, together. I was writing about prosthetics in the ordinary sense, but also about assistive technologies in the far less ordinary sense: low tech tools, hybrid technologies, art works, and more. The ideas were associatively connected, restless with questions. And all of it, in retrospect, was a platform, a runway for me to write myself into a mode of working as a design researcher and artist.

You can see some of my current and ongoing projects—making, writing, speaking, and even, yes, still blogging—here.

I tweet. You can use this site by going straight to the archives for past posts, or you can use the guide here on the home page.